Between 27BC and AD476 a series of men became Roman Emperor, ruling a domain that stretched across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Some of them did this rather well, expanding Rome’s territories further, installing just laws and maintaining order within the city. Others, however, were distinctly less successful at the job. Ancient Rome’s […]
Search Results for: ancient rome
Sex in Ancient Rome
Sexual activity in Ancient Rome wasn’t the licentious free-for-all we may imagine (especially for women); in fact it was strictly regulated. But author and historian LJ Trafford has unearthed plenty of weird and lurid facts about Ancient Roman sex for her new book, as she tells Historia. When my publisher suggested to me that I […]
Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome by LJ Trafford
From emperors and empresses, poets and prostitutes, slaves and plebs, Ancient Rome was a wealth of different experiences and expectations. None more so than around the subject of sex and sexuality. The image of Ancient Rome that has come down to us is one of sexual excess: emperors gripped by perversion partaking in pleasure with […]
How to Survive in Ancient Rome by LJ Trafford
Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Rome and you had to start a new life there. How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? Where would you go to have your hair done? Who would you go to if you got ill, or if you were mugged […]
Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome
When Pen & Sword Books approached historian and novelist LJ Trafford about writing a book they described as ‘Horrible Histories for Grownups’, set in Ancient Rome, she accepted with pleasure. As readers of her books – and her Historia pieces – know, she’s an expert in the bizarre, ridiculous and downright disgusting details of Roman […]
Review: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World by Mary Beard
The historian Michael Arnheim reviews Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World, which has just been published as a paperback. “What was it really like to rule and be ruled in the Ancient Roman world?” That is how Professor Mary Beard describes her book. In fact, it is a not particularly subtle […]
Rome’s lost exiles
Exile was a very Roman punishment, Fiona Forsyth says. But under Augustus it got personal. Fiona looks at the fate of the lost Romans who lived — and often died — in exile, including members of the Emperor’s own family, and the poet Ovid, subject of her latest novels. When Rome’s first emperor died, there […]
Syndrome K, the ‘disease’ that saved lives in occupied Rome
Sarah Freethy uncovers the extraordinary story of Syndrome K, the supposedly deadly disease that saved lives in German-occupied Rome in 1943. The Fatebenefratelli Hospital sits on an island in the south bend of the Tiber, in the heart of Rome. It looks as if a great ship beached itself between Trastevere and the Jewish Quarter, […]